REPLY Why don't organizations function better? (SD6597)

[SDMAIL Ken Lloyd]

Posted by  "Ken Lloyd" <kalloyd at wattsys.com>

>> Posted by  "Jim Hines" <jim at ventanasystems.com>
>> 
>> Wade Schuette brings evolutionary processes into the 
>> discussion of why organizations don't function better.  
>>
>> It turns out that evolution (toward something fitter) has a 
>> few requisites that are probably not well satisfied by most 
>> organizations.  One of the most important is a **very small** 
>> probability of changing what others have done before.  In 
>> biological systems the probability of a change (mutation) is 
>> about one in a hundred million.  In organizations, however, 
>> it's the rare person who doesn't want to try something new.  
>> A high rate of change severely limits the level of complexity 
>> that can evolve.

 
Jim, evolution is evaluated by how well a system (living or not) positions
and perpetuates itself in a context. The context with the system embedded in
it decides winning and losing.  Therefore, a winning adaptation means
adaptation to the context.  The context is chock full of other systems
involved in the same process.  This is a process of energy and entropy
exchange between the system and its context toward a Nash Equilibrium.
There are several strategies that may be measured on Maslow's Hierarchy - so
obviously any strategy that does not achieve (minimally) survivability is
very risky.  Why?  This can be understood in the simple dynamics of the
Prisoner's Dilemma - a dynamic interaction of a decision system (a prisoner)
with its context (other prisoners).  The "best" solution for the system AND
context is NOT the optimal solution for the individual system.  Thus,
disruptive technologies (adaptations) are often treated as virulent by the
context environment, and attacked (Prisoner's Dilemma with Evolution).

Every once in a while, the context does not perceive the ramifications of
the perturbation (David and Goliath), and a new Nash Equilibrium achieved
(attempted, after Goliath is buried).  It is a rare System Dynamicist that
gets his mind around the complexity of this interaction over time and with
myriad perturbation dynamics going on.  Computers can help. This may explain
the policy decisions outlined in your paper. Remember, Jim Hines != Context.

Posted by  "Ken Lloyd" <kalloyd at wattsys.com>
posting date  Sat, 8 Sep 2007 08:27:51 -0600